Category Archives: Things I Like

DC comics is running a sales on Digital Graphic Novels for the holidays and when I saw this I figured at least some of you out there in the Heromachine community would love to learn of this and so here I am Sharing it with you !

I originally wasn’t planning to do a COTW this week, I figured most people would be too busy with festive pursuits to have time to spare, especially considering its Friday. However, it would seem Vampyrist has other ideas. I nip on to the forums for a quick look, to see if anything has been posted whilst I was having my dinner and this is what I was greeted with.

Vampyrist is one of those classic ‘machiners (not a term I tend to throw around lightly) who have a style that is truly their own, much like AMS or dblade, you can try and copy it as much as you like, but you’ll never get it exactly right, it will never look as good as what he does. And this is as fine an example of the breed as I have ever seen.

If we just set the obvious aside for the moment, we’ll kick off with something that has always impressed me about Vampyrist’s work. He always seems to do very minimal shading at first glance, you notice a few sports of highlighting on the pants, the glow from the flames that is reflected off the leg, and you don’t really think too much more of it. Then you look again and you notice the very subtle shadowing on the left foot, then the chin and the stomach and then the arm and chest. His subtlety with shading on his characters always gets me. It shows you don’t have to use masses upon masses of light and shadow to get the result.

And now that that’s out of the way, we can move on to the obvious. Masking the skeleton onto the flame effect (*wheels out COTW slogan board*)- simple but so effective. Now this is where you use masses and masses of light and shadow to get the result. I’m not even going to bother trying to count the layers of colour here, it would be pointless, but you have to give Vamp massive props for how good this looks. The fire looks so real and alive, you can feel the heat, and the black, almost charcoal look, of the bones in the flames contrasts so wonderfully against the vivid colour engulfing them. Best examples, just look at the right hand. And that right eye looks positively evil (as I’m sure was the intent). If people are still umping and erring over what to nominate for the Hall Of Fame (nominations are still open btw), you could do a lot worse than to nominate this.

Note: Obviously there won’t be a COTW next week, I doubt much will be popping up on the forums next week and anyway, I’ll be too busy to write it. Though you can of course expect a review of the Doctor Who Christmas Special on Thursday.

This weeks COTW was a hard one to decide. There were a few that at different points of the week I was planning to write this post about. In the end I had to go back and go through them all and basically see which one I would have the most to say about. And this wonderful piece of surrealism came out on top.

Now, obviously the most striking thing about this piece, is the fact that his head and shoulders have been reduced to bubbles. If you just look at the lowest bubbles, you can see where Rob has masked the hands and arms to the energy. Plus the fact that some of the bubbles are skin coloured, you really do get the impression that this person is actually dissolving.

And then, once again, Rob is being sneaky and testing me on my skills in try to explain how he does these effects. I am of course talking about the white shine he has created on the chest and legs. And I’m kinda at a loss. I at least figured out that the abs come from the really muscular Male-Alternate body and the glow effect on them is the shading circle set to colour 1 as the skin colour and colour 2 as white, but I actually have no idea how he did the chest. Rob, once again I must ask you to explain your methods.

Now, I have literally now just spotted one thing that needs to be changed on this piece before I could truly say its perfect. The feet. They aren’t the same colour as the rest of the skin. It’s not that noticeable when you first look, what with everything else going on in this picture, but now that I’ve noticed it, it’s really nagging me. But otherwise, I would have to say that this picture is sublime (if you’ll excuse the pun).

It’s funny, I always try to feature different people for CotW, just so I’m not repeating myself. However, I’m spectacularly bad at it, as I’m sure those of you who remember the original run will know. But it seems there is one person who I just can’t stop featuring, as this will be their 3rd or 4th time getting CotW.

Ok, I will say straight off, this isn’t as good as the last of Candruths works we featured on CotW, but that one was a masterpiece. But I have to feature it, simply for the same exact reason I always feature Candruths art, the flipping’ attention to detail on the shading and highlighting. If I could just draw your attention to the wrinkles around the nose and the mouth. Look at that lighting, really properly look. You have the base purple skin colour, then you have a slightly lighter violet colour, then that cream colour for highlights. Add the black shadow shading and then you have another purple to accentuate the contrast in colour (though this could be a mixture of the lighter purple and the black, but it looks to me like another colour). Most people just have base colour, highlight colour, shade colour, done. But obviously not Candruth. And then you have those eyes. Not only are they superbly creepy, but they also seem to have at least 5 different colours in there for shading and highlighting (green, cream, pink, very light purple, white and a darker purple) added onto the base colours. Honestly, Candruth does more shading on her characters eyes than I do on my whole characters. And that’s saying something. And just when I think I can stop going on about the shading, I see the neck. And the shadows on the hood, making it melt seamlessly into the background. God, so good.

Oh, and does anyone else think Star Wars when they see this picture, or is it just me?

Now there’s a very particular reason I chose this weeks COTW and I want to see if anyone realises before they get to the end of the post. So, everyone, please take a look at this.

Ok, well for a start it’s DiCicatriz, so that means the shading is awesome. You can just feel the cold emanating from him, with those icy blues and the stark white highlights. But that’s not the reason.

Then we have the contrast of the picture. The cold blues and whites of the foreground character stand out brilliantly against the warm reds oranges and browns of the background. Still not the reason though.

Then we have the costume. Admittedly I would have preferred it if the pure black didn’t make up most of the colour for the costume, it does mean much of the detail is lost, but it works against the very light body colours. I do like the fact that DiCi has used some of the lesser seen items, the disk shoulder pads (not sure what they’re called) and the giant clawed gauntlets. It makes the piece stand out more. But again, that’s not the reason.

The reason I chose to feature this picture, is because of his face. He’s Regice . Ok not really, but he looks quite like him. Seems like someone else is as hyped as I am for the new Pokemon games .

In lieu of a Big Question this week, and because I’m a massive Pokemon fanboy, I’m going to be taking a look at the soon to be released 3rd Gen Pokemon remakes. I apologise to all of you who aren’t Pokemon fans, normal service will be resumed next week (because I won’t have got the games by then so I can’t do a review of them, thank you Gamefreak and your stupid police of giving Europe the games a week after everyone else).

Difficult decision this week. There’s been at least 3, maybe 4 pictures that could have been featured this week, but I’m going to go with this one by Nug because it gives me a bit more to talk about.

Lets kick off with the best bit shall we. As I’m sure everyone has noticed, the colour on the visor here is truly stunning. The warmth and the depth is gorgeous, it really adds to the sunrise reflection effect that is being portrayed here. It also doesn’t drown out the rest of the reflection, nor the face beneath the visor, which is good, making the image seem more realistic. I also like the fact that Nug put small highlighting shines in some of the hexagons on the visor. It’s a little detail that just adds that little bit of polish to the image and just takes it that little bit further.

Nug said on his thread that he wasn’t to happy with the hair on this picture. I personally can’t see the problem. The slight glow that he has added makes the hair seem more natural than it would if it were just left unshaded. That combined with the fact that you can actually see the individual hairs for the most part gives a natural looking hair style with an un-natural edge, a very pleasant and eye-pleasing juxtaposition.

However, we now come to something I haven’t done in a while, what’s wrong with the picture. Nug is right, this picture isn’t perfect, it could be improved. And for me, it’s the jaw line. The metal part of the helmet is made from a cyber-torso, which is fine and the item works well for its purpose, but I don’t like how Nug just left the bottom edge as it was. It gives the character an oddly shaped square jaw and it looks odd when you look at the characters chin. If he had masked the torso item to the same female head he had used for the chin, Nug may have been on to a real winner here. But just that one bit makes it fall short of perfection. But only just.

Our esteemed founder Mr Hebert posted this over on the Heromachine Facebook page earlier today and I thought I might as well share it here, because he’s right, it does perfectly encapsulate what this community is all about.

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